They could count the oxen and make a pretty close guess of how many days they could live in this way, even with the best probable fortune favoring them, and to the best of them there was but little hope, and to those who were dependent it seemed as if the fate of Fish and Ischam might be theirs almost any day.  When the Author conversed with them at this camp he found them the first really heart-broken men he had ever seen.  Some were men of middle age who had left good farms that gave them every need, and these they had left to seek a yellow phantom, and now there were yellow phantoms of a different sort rearing their dreadful forms all about them.  They called themselves foolish gold hunters to forsake a land of plenty for a chance to leave their bones in a hot desert.  More eyes than one filled with tears, and hopes in more than one breast vanished to almost nothing.  More than one would gladly have placed himself back where he could have been assured of the poorest fare he ever saw upon his farm, for bread and water would have been an assurance of life, of which there seemed to be really but little expectation here.

When they left this camp in the canon the trail was between two high rocks, rising like walls on each side.  In one place they were so near together that an ox could hardly squeeze through.  In a very short time they came to a bunch of willows growing out in the open ground.  The little bunch or grove was forty or fifty feet in diameter, and in the center was a spring of water.  The center of the clump had been cleared out, making a sort of corral of bushes, enclosing the spring.  On the outside there was quite a little growth of grass, which was a fortunate thing for their poor beasts.

Away in the distance, rising up a little against the western sky they could see mountains with snow on them, and it seemed as if it were a journey of five or six days to reach them, but the good water and the grass bolstered up their spirits wonderfully for there was present relief and rather better prospects ahead.  They were pretty sure that the wide plain held no water.  Everything that would hold the precious drink was filled, and the best preparations made for what they believed was to be the final struggle for life.  They rested one day and prepared for the very worst that might before them.  Early in the morning when they could see plainest, they looked across the expanse before them and really it did not seem quite so barren, hot and desolate as the region they had passed, and they talked and hoped that this would be the last desert they must cross and that Los Angeles lay just beyond the sunny ridge they could dimly see ahead.  There were some tears that more than one would not live to answer roll call on the other side, but it was the last hope, and worth an earnest, active trial.